Applying Marketing Concepts to Seventh-day Adventist Secondary Education

Problem Seventh-day Adventist academies face financial problems due to declining enrollments and inadequate funding. Higher education has looked to marketing as a possible means of reversing these trends. While much has been written about marketing in higher education, little has been written concerning the marketing of secondary education. Method In order to accomplish the purpose of this study, it was necessary to review the current ideas on marketing higher education and examine those ideas that might apply to secondary education. An outline for marketing SDA secondary education was then developed. In order to validate the outline, a panel of judges, composed of two groups of SDA educators, was selected to evaluate the conclusion. This outline and a summary of educational marketing were sent to a randomly selected group of principals of SDA boarding academies in the United States for their evaluation and comments. The outline was revised with these observations in mind. Subsequently, the revised outline and summary were submitted to the Union Directors of Education for their appraisal, and their remarks constituted the basis for evaluation and final revision of the outline. Results It would appear that educators have accepted the idea that a form of marketing can be applied to education. The majority of institutions of higher education discussed in the literature reviewed reported a degree of success regardless to the institution size or the extent of the marketing effort. Although limited in number, there were educators who advocated that marketing can and should be applied not only to higher education but to elementary and secondary education as well. A sampling of Seventh-day Adventist educators agreed that marketing may be workable in the context of SDA boarding academies. There appeared to be an agreement that something must be done to help achieve the mission of providing a Seventh-day Adventist education for the church's young people. Conclusions Since it has been demonstrated that marketing concepts can be applied to higher education and since conditions that have concerned higher education exist in private secondary schools, it may then be of value to suggest the adoption and use of these marketing principles in Seventh-day Adventist academies. The outline should provide administrators with a guide for taking the necessary steps in applying these principles in their individual schools.